


Deliverance

by Adadzio



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Disturbing Themes, F/M, Gen, Multi, Pre-Series, Slavery, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-17
Updated: 2017-08-17
Packaged: 2018-12-05 05:18:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11571141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adadzio/pseuds/Adadzio
Summary: Nine times Melisandre died, and one time she lived.





	Deliverance

**Author's Note:**

> ( Please don't hate me for writing an almost 14k word Mel fic, I wanted to flesh out a possible backstory in more depth, because TWOW is still nowhere is sight,, )
> 
> Anyway this is a dark fic and implies/describes a lot of trauma so please heed the warnings. A few parts of Mel's backstory are borrowed from my fic Storms of Red, but the majority is different. There are also some snippets from the books woven in. Obviously, GRRM holds all the credit.
> 
> I hope you enjoy, please let me know your thoughts xx

**I**

_There is a hell worse than this_ , they told her. _There is a place so dark and terrible that even the most seasoned travelers, the most scarred and weathered warriors fear to glimpse_.

It was this threat which kept them from escaping. “Think of running?” her mother warned. “Think of running and they will ship you to Asshai, Melony, in the bottom of a cramped ship, with your body lying in its own filth.” 

The words sent a violent shiver through her. Why should she think of running? Her manse was vast and beautiful, shaded from the stink and sweat of the alleys by an orchard of ancient clove trees and sweet beet roots. A quiet, sultry heat drifted through the hills on the east side of the river, carrying only the faintest scent of the fish that filled the city. Melony loved to remove her sandals and hop across the burning heat of the bricks, then find cool shelter in the fields beyond. She would pick little sedge flowers there and lay them at her mistress's slippered feet. She did not think of running, not at all. Not until— 

_Until…_

Her master had an aristocratic friend of the Old Blood. He was a peculiar man with sharp, violet eyes. Melony was usually tasked to wait upon them, filling their cups with wine and listening as they plotted about tigers and elephants. Often she saw a queer desperation in her master's gaze. Only later did she learn that he depended on this man for patronage and admittance into the Black Walls, something that only those of Valyrian ancestry could do. 

During one of these visits the man grew restless with her master's flatteries. Brusquely, he rose from his chair. "Enough for now. Let us continue this over supper, for I find myself wearied."

"Of course, my— "

"And send this girl to my chambers while I rest."

It took Melony a moment to realise he was referring to her. "Well and good, my Noble Lord," her master began, uneasily. "But surely you will prefer someone more skilled…indeed, my wife has a lovely attendant from Myr— " 

"I will prefer  _this_ one," the man snapped. He strode off toward his visiting quarters without another word, followed by two scurrying slave boys.

Her master did not move. After a moment he glanced back to where she stood, still holding her flagon of wine, and scowled. "Well, what are you waiting for? Go tell Trianna to scrub you clean for our noble guest." She did not understand why she had to be cleaned to serve the man in another room, but did as he commanded.

It would have been better to bathe afterward. Afterward she felt very dirty. The lord had done something to her, and it had made her bleed, and she was so ashamed that she fled the room without fastening her tunic. 

"There was a time when men knew how to be men," her mother cried angrily, scrubbing her daughter's skin in the rusted basin. Trianna and the kitchen slaves sighed in agreement. "Melony, you learn early. Women must lead men to become who they should be."

Melony simply stared into the flame of the hearth. _But_   _I am not a woman_ , she thought. _I am only eleven._

The pain did not end after that. She did not have a father, as far as she knew, and her mother could not protect her, could not rebel, else she be sold off to far worse. “I knew this would happen,” her mother lamented, when the lord was once again visiting. “I knew they would hurt you, these men, these animals, I knew they would someday…If only I could take the pain away…if…”

“I will leave,” Melony said.

Her mother’s grip was harsh, leaving bruises on an already bruised arm. “Don’t say such things. They will find you. Remember the punishment for escaping!”

Melony jerked herself away. “They can send me to Asshai! I don’t care!”

“Don’t say such things. It isn’t so bad here— “ her mother was weeping now— “see? We live in a fine manse. They hurt me, too, and you came of it. You came of pain and suffering. Something beautiful from something ugly, my beautiful little girl— “

That made it worse, somehow. Before the lord could call upon her that night, she kissed her mother’s sleeping hand, and tucked some hard biscuits into her tunic. Then she walked out of her master’s house and followed the bricks along the grove to the Rhoyne, and from there to the harbour. 

She made it a third of the way before a merchant stopped her. “I will go to Asshai,” she replied, when he recognised the jug tattooed upon her cheek. “Send me to Asshai, before my master can.”

“And miss my reward?” He gave her a wry look. "This house will pay me well. Come, girl, don't make it worse for yourself." And he took her by the arm, directly to her master.

It was nearly dawn when they arrived. Melony dared not look at the dreadful lord, staring instead at her own sandals. She had never seen her master so furious. He was not a particularly cruel man, she did not think, yet his eyes were filled with cold rage as he shoved a coin at the merchant who had found her. 

By now half the manse was stirring and peeking their heads into the ivied courtyard. "My lord, be merciful," the mistress entreated in her samite bed robes. Her voice was apprehensive. "Do not punish the girl too badly. Surely she has only wandered off…"

Her master raised a hand to his wife in warning, and she fell silent. "That is of little significance. She has displeased our noble guest." His wrath fell back on her. "Girl, you will beg the gracious lord's forgiveness." 

She could take it no longer. "No, don't make me look at that man…" Her voice was a pitiful wail. She clutched at his silk tunic, quaking all the while. "Master, please. He is a bad man!" 

His eyes widened in rage. "You dishonour me twice over," he seethed, shoving her away. Panic was plain on his face, his tongue profuse with apology. "I implore you to forgive her, my N— "

"Spare me, Vhalaso." The purple-eyed man looked almost bored. "I see how gentle you outsiders are with your property. At the least I would suggest you remove her from my sight, and quickly." 

Her master lowered his head, humiliated. "I shall correct this at once, my Noble Lord." He shouted for a slave to cloak him. Melony glimpsed anguish in her mistress's eyes, but the woman said nothing.

He dragged her to the corral none too gently. "I want my mother," Melony whined. He quieted her with his whip on the back of her legs, a single _thwap_  so hard that it drew a thin line of blood. Then he called for a bronze collar to be fastened about her neck. It was a foreign thing to her, for he had always allowed his house slaves to forgo their collars within his estate. 

Melony was still sniffling when he led her across the Long Bridge to the western side of the city.  _For what reason should master drag her around?_  People of quality did not travel so far by foot. He was no noble of the Old Blood, else he would have lived within the Black Walls rather than awaiting the rare invitation, but he was still a freeborn man of decent wealth and property. "Master, where— " 

"Silence!" he roared. "You have shamed me beyond telling this day. Do you have any idea the damage you've caused? " She did not answer, for he had forbidden her, though she began crying in earnest when they reached Fishermonger's Square.

The plaza was heavy with humidity and sun-slicked flesh, a tangle of wayns and palanquins. Even through her sandals, Melony could feel the warmth of the red bricks underfoot. In the center of the square stood a cracked and headless statue of a dead triarch. Her master pulled her toward the far eastern stall, where a pair of silent boys stood behind a seated man, holding a brocaded silk awning over his head.

Their master was young, with amber skin that perspired freely, and wiry red hair coiled atop his head. A sapphire-fringed tokar shone even in the shade, signalling foreign wealth. Melony looked down through her tears, trying not to stare at his gold rings.

"Is she clean?" the slaver asked, not looking up from his trestle table. His accent was oddly guttural.

"She was born in my manse," her master said curtly. "See her brand? She's a clean Volantene girl." 

"But her maid-head? Is it unbroken?"

Melony did not understand the question, but her master did. "She is  _clean_ ,"he growled.

"She is very small," the slaver complained. "She won't last, labouring in our Ghis."

"Labouring? No! I expect a good price for her." 

The Ghiscari smiled, showing gold in his teeth. "Who will buy her, good master, a Lysene pillow house? She does not have the beauty. Unless she can scribe, or play the high harp…" Fear welled in Melony's chest, but the slaver only regarded her thoughtfully. "She might do well in Yunkai."

"Slaver's Bay again! You will not cheat me that way."

"No, good master. There is coin to be made in Yunkai—have you heard of the seven sighs, the sixteen seats of pleasure? Highly famed are those…"

Her master's face darkened. "Is there no respectable house to take her in? She can tend a manse well, and weave."

"Good master," the man said apologetically, "clearly she is not pure." 

Melony could feel the sweat and fury pouring off her master in waves. "Auction her off, then," he snarled. "Just rid me of the worthless cunt." 

For some reason the slaver looked sad. He nodded, plucking an olive from a little ebony dish. "She will join the seventh lot, there on the northern wall. Get her to stop crying." 

It was then that Melony heard her mother calling her name, somewhere across the plaza. 

* * *

**II**

A god owned her now. His name did not fall easily upon her lips, for her lips knew only the most bastard of Valryian dialects. 

"Soon you will be cleansed of all filth, oh yes! Cleansed by a great red fire," a priest promised. His scarlet robes dragged upon the temple steps, gathering ash and embers from a thousand sweltering braziers. "Then, once you are clean, your lips will be able to speak the name of R'hllor."

Melonywished he would stop talking. Blood had crusted on her legs from her master's whip, and she was weary from walking the length of the city twice, all after a night of attempted escape. _Why does he want me?_ she wondered.When he'd spoken up in the crowd, the bidding space had fallen quiet. Melony was puzzled, even more so when the red priest did not bid, simply offered a purse heavy with honors for the slaver to weigh.

She'd seen the great temple before, of course. It was not so far from her master's manse. Her mother and the other slaves brought their children to the plaza to see the priests light their nightfires. Melony knew the prayers and the songs, had heard the High Priest shriek of the doom that awaited the descendants of Old Volantis atop his red pillar.

Yet never had she been inside the temple itself. It seemed carved from the cliffs behind it, an enormity of lofty pillars, gold steps jutting from hidden alcoves, bridges arching as high as the heavens above her head. One flowed into the other, such that she did not know where the cliff rock ended and the temple began. A hundred hues of red met and melded in its cavernous walls, dissolving one into the other like the sea at sunrise. Her gaze drank it in, burning bright at the sight. 

She was startled by the priest's voice. "Well, child?" He tilted his face down to her. She stared, frightened, at the flames inked upon his cheeks, forehead, and chin. "Do you want to be clean? Do you want to be loved by your new master?" 

Melony was not sure. If being loved by her new master meant that she wouldn't be hurt, surely that was a good thing. She nodded, hoping it was the right answer. The lips of the red priest curled up, and all the flames on his face blurred and twisted.

* * *

She soon understood why the temple had wanted her.

That horrid lord had found her pretty enough, she realised—pretty enough to sully—and some priests took a liking to her strangeness. The kindest ones would read to her in High Valyrian as they lay upon beds dappled with golden sunlight, or they would share what they saw in the flames, translating each motion, each swirl of smoke in the hearth. Outside clients liked that she was small and quiet, and still others were pleased that she did not react much to pain. 

Even so, she was far from the favourite temple prostitute. Her eyes were brown and plain, her skin tanned, her hair a dull auburn. Areni was called upon more often in her cell. Perhaps it was because Areni's mother had been bred in the Valyrian pleasure gardens, and had produced a daughter with exotic pale hair. It might have been Areni's eyes that intrigued men instead, black eyes lined with fine charcoal, or her perfumed thighs. Or perhaps it was because she flaunted herself for all to lust after. 

Melony showed little enthusiasm for the men who visited her, and less for the women. She viewed it all as a duty.  _A holy duty,_ she reminded herself, though sometimes she felt ashamed of the teardrop they had tattooed over her childhood brand.

There was a man, once, a boy—when Melony was still very young in the temple and very foolish. _Ulek_. The flames jumped and spit. Ulek was there, for the briefest of moments, passing through the temple, lounging about the latticed corridors to catch a glimpse of the pleasure slaves. Areni had laughed at his efforts, tossing her white-gold braid as if she were the most revered Lyseni courtesan. He plied Qesse and Fimka with stolen sweetcakes next, before finally trying his luck with Melony.

"How old is this one? A hidden beauty, I think."

"Ten-and-two," she had murmured, keeping her eyes fixed on the linen she was scrubbing. 

"I am ten-and-six," he said. "Maybe you can be my wife."

Melony smiled shyly.

The next months had been very happy. They were long, hazy days filled with stolen encounters, with Ulek reaching through a crack in the lattice to stroke her billowing cotton shift, to pass her flowers and pretty words. Once he stole enough coin to actually lie with her. 

"Do you have an intention?" she asked, not daring to hope that he might simply want  _her_. 

Ulek flashed her a mouthful of crooked teeth. "What do men usually say to that?"

Melony shrugged, still clutching her robe around her. "Sometimes there are warriors with arakh tattoos who wish to offer their bodies to R'hllor, to seek a blessing for battle or duel. Others say that they have not been blessed with sons, that their seed burns no flame in the wombs of their wives. They ask R'hllor to smile upon our union in his temple and grant what they seek."

Ulek had tugged at his tunic as she spoke, baring a dark, muscled chest to her, and the evidence of his desire standing proud between his legs. "I seek only the girl before me," he grinned. Her heart soared at the words. That evening he kissed her breasts and praised her golden skin until dawn filtered through her window. And he filled her ears with sweet promises. He told her how he’d find some gold and offer it to his master, how he’d pay her dowry and her slaving price and buy her for his manse.

The prostitutes laughed at her girlish dreams, pointing out that Ulek would not want a whore for a wife. "I am no whore," she cried furiously. "You may paint yourselves like street whores, but do not mistake me for one." 

In the end, the temple had not let Melony go, for she was sacred property. _Did she not know she was owned by R’hllor?_  That lesson had been burned into her. And it had been enough to drive Ulek away, without so much as a word or kiss goodbye. 

 _Ulek,_  the flames sighed, as she lay beneath other men. 

She wept beneath them for half a year, wept so hard that she was certain her heart had shattered in her ribs. The thought of her only love saddened her for years to come. What was a thought, the priests countered, but a passing flame, soon to be extinguished, put out by another, brighter and more pressing? 

Still, the dreams passed over her. She mourned them when they died.

* * *

**III**

"Melony?"

She barely recognised the voice's owner. The roots of the woman's hair looked as if they'd been painted with ash, wrinkles and dark circles spread beneath her eyes, and her tunic had grown loose on a thin frame. Melony finished emptying her waste pail into the pit behind the temple plaza, then set it down with a dull clang.

"Mother," she greeted. She wondered how she must look to her mother now. Her breasts had budded and her hips had ripened. Most of all her eyes had hardened, for they had seen much and more in thirteen years. 

"They…told me you had been sent to Asshai." Unshed tears filled her eyes.

Melony shook her head, wincing at the sun's rays in her face. She looked down at the bricks beneath her feet.

When she looked up again, her mother's dark gaze had narrowed at the tattoo on her cheek. "You are a whore?"

Shame prickled Melony's skin. _No use denying it._ "In the temple." 

Her mother seemed to wake from her shock, then, and flew at her in a rage. "You stupid girl!" she hissed. Weak fists collided with Melony's chest, nails clawing at her arms. "Stupid, stupid girl! What did I tell you—still you ran— " 

Melony wrenched herself away, shooting her mother a vicious look. " _You_ are the stupid woman. Why did you not kill me in your belly? What kind of mother brings another slave into the world?"

"I had no choice— "

"You useless wretch! Maybe you wanted men to force themselves on me, to take the burden off yourself!" Her mother slapped her soundly, and Melony tasted blood.

A heavy silence passed. "I did not want you at first," her mother admitted, finally. Tears were spilling freely down her weathered face. "How could I want a child? But, you were all I had…and then…" Melony saw her mother's face contort with a thousand emotions. "My daughter died two years ago. And so she must be dead to me." Before Melony could react, her mother gathered her linen veil over her head and turned, hurrying back across the great square.

She stared after her for several long minutes, watching the silhouette disappear down the narrow street that led to her old master's quarter. Melony sat on the ledge next to her forgotten pail. An hour passed, and another, until the sun began to dip in the west. Priests and priestesses spilled out from the temple steps, sweeping their red robes behind them. She listened as they rang bells and inhaled the incense as it filled the air. They cried out for the braziers to be stoked into great leaping flames, flames to bring back the sun. 

Melony laid down on the brick and began to cry. First it was a few silent tears, then a river of them, and soon her entire body was wracked with sobs. She did not know how many hours passed. When it was very dark, with only the nightfires to illuminate the square, she felt a hesitant hand on her shoulder.

"Melony?" Fimka was standing over her. "The overseer said you were missing…you will be punished if— " She frowned. "Melony? What happened?" 

A minute passed before she found her voice, and even then it was hardly a whisper. "My mother…" She hugged her knees. "She…" 

Fimka knelt next to her and tried to put an arm around her shoulders, but Melony tore away like a wounded animal. "Don't touch me," she snapped. She realised that she was crying again. "Do you think I am like the rest of you, that I'm meant to be here? I am not! Let them beat me until I'm dead. Go, tell them! I will not lie down for them like you stupid whores do!" Fimka's frown deepened, her grey eyes clouding with anger. "Go," Melony cried, "I don't need you to stand over me."

She went, and Melony began to cry harder.

* * *

**IV**

There was a high priestess, first in her order, who sometimes visited the temple.

Melony marvelled at her beauty. She had a heart-shaped face and all of her was red, even her eyes. Her breasts were full and her waist narrow, her hips flaring softly beneath layers of silk. And her skin was so ethereal—milk-white and unblemished, like a polished ivory chalice.

When she strode down the corridors in her red robes, attended by a dozen acolytes with torches, every eye lingered. Sometimes she twisted her fingers and pale flames would coil about her arms like little snakes. Other times she stood on the steps of the plaza and conjured lilac smoke with a flick of her wrist, eliciting gasps of amazement from the crowds below. _Mostly men._ Men lacked sense in their heads, Melony was coming to understand. They judged by their eyes and thought with their cocks, and so they were fooled as easily as a child. 

One summer the priestess stood atop the red pillar usually reserved for their High Priest and intoned, "There is only one god who listens to those in bondage. Our god is R'hllor, and he will deliver us… " Her voice was like lilting music. "But those with a false heart…will not be saved!"

That was the first time Melony saw a man burned. She watched behind the shade of a column as they tied him to a stake right there in the square and set him ablaze. He was one of their own, clearly—a ragged slave with flames tattooed across his face—the triarchs would not have allowed such a spectacle otherwise. She did not know what crime he had committed to be condemned.  _It must have been something terrible,_ she thought. The smell turned her stomach, and his screams pierced her ears. Yet the priestess stood unfazed, and sang how fortunate he was to perish by R'hllor's blessed hand. 

It was a lesson not soon forgotten. Yromache, she was called. Sometimes Melony saw herself in the flames, gliding down the halls like Yromache. 

Soon after that she slid up to the Fiery Hand slave who guarded the prostitutes' quarters. A few of his fellow warriors were sprawled across low couches in the common room, gorging themselves on the city's sweet red wine and bickering over a game of alabaster and onyx cyvasse. "Can you help me?" she murmured to the one on duty. "I need to speak to the high priest."

"A priest?" he asked, not truly listening.

"No. The High Priest, the First Servant." 

The guard looked at her as if she had grown another head. "Girl, return to your…" 

Melony brushed a hand over the front of his orange robes. He was not wearing his ornate armour, and she could feel his manhood stirring against her palm. "Please," she said sweetly. "I will pleasure you well, anything you like." 

He snorted. "If I wanted pleasure, I can visit Areni."

She felt anger flare in her veins, but betrayed nothing upon her face. "Does a strong warrior truly desire that simpering street-girl? I know things Areni does not." Melony touched him boldly, remembering what the slaver had said years ago. "Perhaps you did not know. Before I came to the temple, I was trained in the seven sighs and the sixteen seats of pleasure."

The guard grabbed her wrist, and she feared he had caught the lie, but he did not push her away. "In Yunkai?" he asked, lifting an eyebrow.

"In Yunkai." 

He thought for a moment, then nodded. "I will bring you to the High Priest tonight, when the guard is changed. But first, you will tell me of these sixteen seats…" 

* * *

She'd seen him since she was a babe, preaching with his high voice, sonorous and clear—but she'd never been this close. He was tall and thin, with a shaven head and skin as white as milk. Flames covered his entire skull to form a bright red mask. "Melony, you are?" 

She knelt, shocked that he knew her name. "Yes…Light of Wisdom."

The flames crackled about his eyes and coiled down and around his lipless mouth. "Child, fear me not. I am the First Servant of the Lord of Light, no more worthy of His love than you." She didn't know how to respond, so she rose to set her meager offering of incensed ash bundles on the massive stone table. He studied her with that unnerving gaze, and suddenly she forgot the entire purpose of her visit. Reflexively, she brought her hands to the tie of her finest robe, a pale yellow linen she'd washed and pressed just for this purpose. "No," he said smoothly. 

Melony frowned at the floor. "Do I displease the First Servant?" 

He motioned his servants and guard out with a fluid hand. "A dear girl, you are. We should talk." She was mortified when he took a seat, still studying her intently. It was impossible not to squirm. "They tell me you've come three years ago. You've discovered the Lord of Light, Melony?" She shifted, wracking her brain for every word that had been driven into her mind by the priests. He laughed after she relayed all her education to him.

"A clever girl. But these words mean nothing. True discovery is meeting the Lord in your heart." He tapped his chest with a skeletal finger. "You pray, do you?" 

"Yes," Melony lied. She realised she'd been not entirely honest in her speech of late, but what harm in bending the truth? It was proving far more effective than the alternative.

He laughed again, and the tattoos made dizzying shapes. "But you see things, Melony?" 

She felt a flutter of panic in her chest. "How did you… ?"

"—know? Dear girl, I am the High Priest of R'hllor. It is my duty to know the hearts of his servants. Now…" He leaned closer to her. "Tell me what you see in the fire." 

"I— " She blinked, afraid of answering wrongly. It seemed some kind of test. "It is mostly flame, First Servant." He watched her expectantly. "But sometimes there is…a babe, and a man, in a place of storm and sea…and a blade, First Servant. There is always a red blade, in a great chaos."

The High Priest smiled thinly. "That is a great gift from the Lord, Melony." She felt warm at the praise. "But I know what you are meaning to ask," he continued, gently. "No, you cannot join the priests. You are bound to serve in another way." 

Cold frustration dashed out the warmth. "I do not belong with the other whores," she argued.

He held up a white hand. "We have no whores here. Only sacred servants of the Lord of Light."

 _Then why do I bear the mark of a whore?_  Desperately, she fell to her knees once more, speaking to the marble beneath her hands. "Light of Wisdom, First Servant of R'hllor, I beg you to brand me with the flames of the Lord. He has been calling me to a greater path. I see a great saviour in the fire!"

"Have you been taught in the language of flames, or in the ancient books? The prophecies?"

Melony shook her head in shame. "I—I do not know books. I cannot read the letters—" 

"—and someday, perhaps, you may be suited to learn." Hope leaped in her chest. He folded his hands calmly, thin eyebrows lifted. "But child, I must remind you that the order of priesthood is a very strenuous calling. To interpret the sacred flames of R'hllor is a delicate art, a painful art! Just as a cook does not live the trade of sailing, some were not born with the temperament for divining. When you have matured further, perhaps you may be chosen…but first you must have faith that R'hllor has placed you where you should be." 

 _It was not the Lord who placed me in a prostitutes' bed,_ she thought, _it was you._

He rose before she could respond, and dismissed her with a flick of the wrist toward the door. The encounter crushed a heart that had already been wounded. But the shame soon turned to bitter dispassion, and the tears no longer fell. 

* * *

**V**

"Yromache is traveling to Asshai tomorrow," Fimka confided one evening, scooping some pomegranate seeds into her mouth. The juice stained her lips. 

Melony had been lost in the fire, drinking of the bitter herb that would flush a babe from her belly, as she did every month, as they all did. But talk of the Shadowlands caught her ears. "Asshai?" she murmured. The other girls were too busied with eating. Some warriors of the Fiery Hand had snuck them the remnants of a Braavosi emissary's supper from the upper quarters: goat with sweetgrass, firepods, and decadent amber honey, and Myrish oranges and hard biscuits, cold beet soup thick and rich as purple syrup, and cockles soaked with the juice of bright red pomegranates. Delighted, they crowded around the low table to share the feast, giggling about which one of them would be called upon to warm the emissary's luxurious bed.

All but Melony, who sat black and blue in the corner by the brazier. She had a Tyroshi merchant to thank for her bruises. He'd chosen her for her dark eyes, drunkenly declaring that he wanted to try one of their "red whores" before sailing back to his port. She made no effort to please him. He struck her in fury, and still she did not react. He struck her again, and again, until the world went black. The overseer of her order found her in her cell the following dawn with a split lip and two black eyes. There was little sympathy in her gaze. "Will you never learn, Melony? Or are you too good for us?"

"The High Priest says I have a great gift," she replied. "Soon R'hllor will deliver me from this place."

Melony was dragged into the common room, and there she was whipped as an example to the other prostitutes. They learned a lesson from her ugly scars that day, but she was made all the more defiant. 

"What a morbid fool she is," Areni sneered, breaking Melony out of her thoughts. "Who would want to visit a city of darkness and death?"

"Our holy books come from Asshai," Qesse pointed out, shoving an entire biscuit into her mouth. 

Areni pretended she hadn't heard. "If you ask me, it is not our god she serves, but herself. Still everyone hangs on her every word and sorcery trick, as if she is the most devout and gifted woman to grace the temple."

Irritation flooded Melony's senses. She steadied her breathing with years of practice. "Fools see a fool in everyone else, Areni."  

The satisfaction of calling her out was short-lived. Areni let out a peal of laughter. "Pitiful girl," she derided. "Isn't Melony pitiful? She has no beauty and no talent, only sulks about. Yet like that horrid priestess, she thinks she's above those of us with decent breeding."

The words did not hurt. Over the years Melony had perfected the art of numbing herself to pain. Without missing a beat, she shook her head. "And poor Areni. She thinks herself to have good breeding simply because her mother was a whore with wealthy patrons."

Silence fell over the room. Areni shot to her feet, fuming from her pale hair to her powdered toes. "You miserable freak," she seethed. She thrust a finger toward the inner chamber hall. "Get out, and pray I do not smother you in your pallet!" 

A knife lay in the goat dish, sticky with honey. Melony walked slowly to the table and picked it up. 

Gasps rose up amongst the girls. They fidgeted nervously, all humour gone. Areni seemed poised to call for the Fiery Hand. But Melony simply tucked the knife into her tunic and returned quietly to her cell.

Later, when the world was black and still, she rose from her pillows with a candle in hand. Areni was sleeping soundly in her cell. The fair-haired girl lay oblivious as tendrils of smoke danced about her. It was only when her bedclothes began to smoulder that she stirred, and even then she did not fully wake. Melony turned and barred the door behind her.

Without thinking, her feet carried her out the common room and past the guards in the outer corridor. They tried to stop her. "I was chosen earlier to entertain the Braavosi emissary in his apartments," she told them. Then she continued on her way.

Behind her, Areni had begun to scream. _Let her,_ she thought.  _Those with a false heart will not be saved._

Her feet carried her away from the screams, up a staircase made of gold. Even a whore knew the halls of her temple. She had been living there for four years. Melony walked as if she were the high priest himself, and she owned each wall, each arch and each bridge. When she reached the priestess's quarters she did not slow her pace. The only light came from a tallow candle, smoking in a pool of melted wax. A dark-haired acolyte stirred drowsily on her pallet when she saw the dim shadow on her wall. Before she could cry out, a hand covered her mouth and a knife slid across her throat, spilling her life blood.

Melony took the candle, filled her own mouth with the flame, and kissed the girl, just as a red priest would do. Her cheeks burned and blistered, bringing tears to her eyes. It took all her strength to pull the girl from her linens and conceal her body in a wooden cache near the chamberpot. 

She went through the girl's things, careful not to wake any in nearby rooms. Then she donned the girl's veil and laid down in her pallet, holding herself rigid and alert until the sweet sound of morning drifted through the halls. The priests welcomed the day with songs and chiming bells, and children giggled and chased each other through the temple plaza. 

Another attendant popped her head around the wall, hair still mussed in the weak light of dawn. "Prepare the mistress for our voyage," she said, then disappeared whence she came. 

Yromache was yawning when Melony approached her great canopied bed. She prayed the priestess did not see how she trembled. Fortunately Yromache's face was covered by her exquisite red hair, shining like molten copper in the light of the candles. "Hmm," she sighed. "Is that you, Serazei?"

Melony froze. The priestess glanced up. "Oh, you are the dark one. Isa—?"

"Isaandre, mistress."

"Have you readied yourself?" 

For a moment she could not find her voice. "Yes," she managed, hoarsely. And for once it was true. She was not afraid of Asshai. She had never been afraid.

* * *

Some crowds had formed by the time the priestess and her attendants descended the temple steps. "Yromache," people cried, thrusting gifts at her and a few babes for her to bless. Yromache smiled at them all behind a flickering red gaze. The sun was beginning to beat down in the plaza. With each step Melony grew more nervous, trying to hide herself in the shadows of the twisting red towers, but no one said a word to her or gave her a second glance, not with Yromache captivating them in her magnificent silks. Soon they had turned down the alley that would empty into the sea. _One foot in front of the other._

It was not until they'd boarded their ship that someone took note of the face behind her veil. Serazei narrowed ebony eyes at her. "What is that tattoo? You are not Iseal," she said flatly.

"The High Priest asked me to take her place for this journey," Melony replied. "He desired her service for the holy day, for she is the most skilled in High Valryian."

Serazei scowled. "Her Valyrian is worse than mine…" 

"Our mistress is not skilled with names, surely you've noticed? She knows me by the wrong name."

The acolyte regarded her suspiciously, clearly unconvinced. "What are you truly called?"

"Melo—Melisandre." She smiled. "I can understand the confusion. The mistress is not too far off."

"Another darkness comes," Yromache sighed to the sea, interrupting the chatter behind her. "R'hllor, bring back the dawn."

"Bring back the dawn," Melony echoed with the other acolytes.

 _I am dead to the temple,_ she thought. She could walk where she wanted, and learn her letters, and read the sacred books like a noble girl would. No men would lay atop her ever again, not unless she wanted them to, no master would bruise or bloody her. 

One by one the women left to pray over the nightfires. It was that dreaded time of dusk, before R’hllor touched the sky with his hand. If his servants prayed fervently through the night, and he had mercy on them, he would reach down and take the blackness in one hand and scatter embers with the other. These were called stars. This was the holy time, when the stars grew, stoked into sunlight by faithful prayers. And so the day would begin. The priests called that  _ñāqes,_ dawn.

Melony stood by herself for a long while, not praying, not longing for dawn as she usually did. She had never been this close to a ship before, she realised. It was thrilling. Queer scents and sounds filled the air: salt and frying fish somewhere below deck, hot tar and cracking leather, the familiar incense of the temple and an unfamiliar pungent oil. She leaned over the rail and began to giggle at the novelty, feeling for once like the young girl she was.

Then she remembered the sickening screams and the smell of burning flesh, and the acolyte in her pallet, the knife that had slit across her throat as naturally as an assassin's. The images flashed violently through her mind, unwanted, merciless. Melony shivered, feeling very uneasy.  _Have I sinned, R'hllor?_ She truly did not know. Hope had died years ago, taking honour and sympathy with it. She felt little remorse for the fate of Areni, but the unwitting acolyte…

 _R'hllor is calling me. I must do what I must._  

She thought about the High Priest and his words. It had not been his fault, she decided. He could not see the Lord's fiery hand guiding her because he was human, as all priests were, and even he erred from time to time.

Melony watched the black waves devour one another. Then she lifted her eyes and saw clear across the ruins of Valyria and the Gulf of Grief to the Summer Sea, and even past the Cinnamon Straits to the fabled lands of the Jade Sea, to Asshai-by-the-Shadow. 

* * *

 **VI**  

She knew not where she walked. Her eyes closed for a moment, eyelids clamped tightly against the darkness, the veiled maegis and their black, writhing streets. It was a massive place, at least three times as vast as Volantis, sprawling far past both banks of the River Ash. After a moment she set her gaze on the place where the river met the foggy Mountains of the Morn, and allowed her feet to carry her there. 

Magic had died in the west when the Doom fell on Valyria and the Lands of the Long Summer, and neither spell-forged steel nor stormsingers nor dragons could hold it back, but the east was different. It was said that manticores prowled the islands of the Jade Sea, that basilisks infested the jungles of Yi Ti, that spellsingers, warlocks, and aeromancers practiced their arts openly here, while shadowbinders and bloodmages worked terrible sorceries in the black of night.

Asshai was a never-ending night.

There was no shouting, no raucous revelry or street games. Still, ships from many lands came to this ancient port. Melony heard unknown tongues as she walked through wharf and shadowed bazaar and alley alike, and foreigners murmuring in broken Valyrian. There were the most adventurous traders from Braavos and Pentos and Myr, and hairy Ibbenese, pale-skinned voyagers from Qarth, coal-black Summer Islanders in feathered cloaks, and the furtive Asshai'i themselves in veils. Many simply held out their wares, offering odd things like amber and dragonglass, gold and purple-black amethysts. A few recognised her temple garments and laid out their scarlet silks, as if to entice her. She stopped, briefly, and showed a jeweller the gold brooch she had snuck from Yromache's chest. She traded it for a small ruby and slipped the treasure into a hidden pocket of her new orange robes. 

Others saw her wandering and lingered in stoops to whisper of services done inside their walls. A riding woman of the Dothraki could do healing with grass and corn and horse, a man with a tight chain about his neck could pry apart a corpse and teach her the secrets that hid beneath the skin. Strange temples seemed to sprout from every street corner, worshippers of the Black Goat and the Pale Child and the Lion of Night.

Melony ignored them all. The red temple of Asshai was the only one that mattered. Its torch-lit pillars were a small comfort, like a small fiery lamp amidst a constant night. It became obvious why only the most unusual priests would seek it out. Yromache seemed unaffected by the dark horrors of Asshai, and soon Melony realised that the priestess was entrenched in many sorceries of the city. 

She stood in attendance one morning, ill at ease, as Yromache demonstrated how to mix foul ingredients from the black bazaars. Each combination could be tweaked to produce a different coloured powder. "Mistress," she spoke tentatively, "is this…permitted?"

"Does R'hllor allow a thing to happen that is not permitted?"

Melony lowered her head, chastised. "Mistress, I meant…allowed by the temple."

"The temple ordains its priests, that they might serve the Lord as they will. No thing is forbidden if it furthers our cause."

"But it is a dark magic," Melony blurted. 

Yromache turned flickering red eyes to her. For a long moment she did not speak. Then came her voice, dangerously soft. "All things seem dark when there is darkness in your heart."

Panic rose in her throat. "My heart?"

"The fire reveals all to me. Lack of faith is the blackest of sins, covering your heart until it crumbles to ash in your chest. Do you wish to die such a death?"

"No, mistress— "

"You see the truth and still you doubt. R'hllor will not abide by that."

Melony shivered. "Forgive me," she said dully.

Yromache went back to her demonstration, satisfied that she had sufficiently threatened the girl.    

Melony blinked out of the memory. When finally she glimpsed oceans of ghost grass beyond the city walls, she knew she was close. The grass was taller than a man on horseback and pale as milkglass. In the Free Cities there were courageous merchants who had seen it before, and wove fantastical stories to tell of it, tales of how it murdered all other grass and glowed in the dark with the spirits of the damned. Her stomach roiled to be so near the glassy stalks now.

A few dark streets tapered out into the valley, and fewer still boasted any light. It frightened Melony, for she had been taught to fear the dark. The priestess's words echoed like a booming drum in her ears. Defiant, she chose a narrow alley that wound closest to the base of the mountain. Somewhere in the distance a moonsinger of the Jogos Nhai was keening birthing songs. A single lantern shone from inside the furthest hovel, though even that light was swallowed up by the black, greasy stone that had built all of Asshai. 

Melony pulled her veil down over her face and made for that door. It was a cumbersome thing, only giving way when she gave it a great shove. Her eyes did not adjust well to the orange glow within.

"Close it behind you."

She squinted to find the voice. Ink glistened somewhere in a dim corner. She soon spotted the figure huddled over a desk, robed arm moving steadily back and forth, face invisible beneath a cowl. The ink brush danced with silent precision across a scroll of aged parchment. Melony turned and shut the door with some effort.  
  
Only then did a red mask lift from the figure's hood, lacquer catching a dull sheen of lantern light. Her eyes shone much brighter, black and watery. "What do you seek?"

Melony shivered at the sight of the strange mask. "I want to learn," she said, trying to make her voice firm. 

"To learn?"

 _Well done, Melony. You have no idea what you are even asking for._ "I know what you practice, woman. You are a shadowbinder." Melony lifted her chin as if she weren't secretly afraid of the word. "Are you not?" she added.

The red mask did not react to her haughtiness, or if she did, Melony could not see it. The woman bent back to her work, brush dancing. "I will not take an apprentice who lacks sense."

Anger flared within her. She breathed in and out, fashioning a serene mask of her own. "You think I lack sense?"

"You are a slave." The brushed danced and danced. "It has embittered you."

"Would it not embitter you?" she spat back, aware that she was proving the woman's point. The only response was the gentle scratch of ink against the edge of a parchment, a slick noise as the ink pot was swirled and dipped into.Melony steadied herself, quelling her pride. "Forgive me, mistress. I spoke as a fool."

To her surprise, muffled laughter came from the mask. "Oh? Now I am your mistress? No, girl. This is not the way of things here. Look out the window." Melony hesitated, perplexed. "Go, look. What do you see in the streets of Asshai? Do you see masters and mistresses? Do you see people forcing you to serve them?"

Melony craned her neck in the half-shuttered alcove, searching for the shapeless silhouettes of the street, the rare caravan or ebony palanquin that had wandered this far out.  _Shapes without faces._  "I do not know," she admitted. "I cannot see anything."

The mask nodded. "So it is in the Shadowlands. We maegi are no one. Here, we have no names, nothing binding us but the shadows themselves." The brush was silently discarded, the black figure rising without so much as a rustle of silk. "Tell me what you truly seek."

Melony considered that. _Deliverance._ It seemed almost a whisper in her mind. 

"You have come to the wrong place," the shadowbinder said, as if reading her thoughts. When that dreadful mask was again staring at her, Melony was certain she had made a terrible mistake. "It is not my concern how you came to be here, or who you once were. But to go forward you must go back, and to touch the light you must pass beneath the shadow. To pass beneath the shadow, you must first die in the dark." 

That stole the breath from her chest. "Die?"

"We bind shadows. Do you think it a simple thing? No. You must die to yourself. It is the only way." Her eyes gleamed. "Think hard on that, girl. Are you prepared for death?"

Her brows knit together. Was this dark magic a sin? Would R'hllor forgive her for doing such a thing? _I have always been nothing._   _If I must die to become someone, then..._

She lifted her gaze back to the mask. "I am ready to die," agreed Melony, surprising even herself.

* * *

No children were born here, and few animals survived.

Melony learned why when the maegi reached a hidden hand into the waters of the Ash, glimmering with green phosphorescence, and pulled out a hideous wriggling fish. She held it up by the tail and hacked at its silvery scales with a dagger until it was smooth. Her teacher nodded at the thing in satisfaction, and held it out to Melony, as if it were the greatest gift to give.

Melony wrinkled her nose in disgust. 

"You must eat of its flesh," the mask reminded her, eyes glistening from the light of the river.

Melony steeled herself with an iron will. Her fingers trembled as she took the blind creature, relieved that it was only moving weakly now. Before she could lose her courage she bit into the side of the twisted fish and swallowed, nearly choking on its texture. "Must I finish?" she grimaced.

"It is not necessary." The red mask watched her.

Melony did not know what she was waiting for, until a sharp pain struck her chest, as if a serpent had planted its fangs into her lungs. Melony shuddered with great gasping breaths. "M—my— " A strangled cry bubbled up in her throat, and she fell blindly into the ghost grass. Her eyes lifted with great effort. "It—poison— "

The maegi nodded. 

She glared back in accusation. "You— !"

"I warned you, Melony of Volantis. You said you were prepared for death."

 _I did not want to die like this, with the stink of diseased fish about me._ She meant to beg the maegi to end it, but the only thing that escaped her throat was a silent scream. She panted and groaned, clutching her middle as the icy clutch of the Other tightened about it. Her insides felt as if they'd been coated in frozen tar. Her bones felt heavy and dead.

Suddenly the ghost grass spun around her like leaping white flames, and above her the sky churned, void of stars. She glimpsed the caves that pockmarked the cliffs, where demons and dragons and worse were said to make their lairs. Her stomach gave another violent heave. With it, the world fell away from consciousness. 

When she awoke, she was back in her little pallet in the hovel. Her head ached madly, but the rest of her body felt numb.

"The pain does not last long."  

"Why do I feel so…" She was cut off by a cool cup pressed to her lips.

"You have entered the shadow, Melony."

A furrow made its way between her eyes. "Am I dead?"

Muffled laughter came from the maegi. "Oh, no."

"But did I die?"

The mask leaned forward. "You have cheated the poison, Melony." Her eyes shone like black gems, like dragonglass, glittering with a strange eagerness. "You now tread where true death cannot reach."

Her head was swimming. _Does she mean— ?_ "Now…what?"

"Now, we go to the heart of the Shadow." The maegi stroked a hand over her burning scalp. "Now…we go to Stygai." 

* * *

**VII**

They called it the _corpse city._

The river was perpetually in shadow, save for a few moments at midday when the sun is at its zenith. But this place was darkness through and through. The farther from the city they went, the more grotesque the creatures became, even more deformed than the fish of the Ash. 

"What do you know of shadowbinding?"

Melony struggled not to cough on the air, for it was thick with ash and pale fog, so warm it might actually have been smoke. "They say…you lie with demons." 

The red mask tilted back in laughter. "Your temple fears us as much as the rest, it would seem."

"You do not mate with demons?"

Her teacher's voice was dry. "No doubt some have, in ages past. But you will find the seed of men far easier to procure." 

Melony lifted an eyebrow, glancing at the jagged ridges of the mountain as it rose on either side of the cratered valley. _So simple as that?_ She knew how to draw the seed from men. That she knew well. "Whose seed must I take?"

"You spoke of a vision, yes? You have the gift of divination?"

"A sword of fire."

The mask nodded. "Therein lies the answer to your question." She motioned for Melony to hand her the book she'd been tasked with carrying. Fine leather cracked open softly, its inlaid stones black in the moonlight. "In the ancient books it is written that there will come a day after a long summer when the stars bleed and the cold breath of darkness falls heavy on the world. In this dread hour a warrior shall draw from the fire a burning sword. And that sword shall be Lightbringer, the Red Sword of Heroes, and he who clasps it shall be Azor Ahai come again, and the darkness shall flee before him…"

"I know it," Melony interrupted. "We speak of it in my land."

"All the gods and their priests believe they know the truth of it. Do you know how many are led astray, and err, seeing what they wish to see? Listen to the true tale, without distortion."

Defensiveness prickled her like an instinct. "R'hllor is the true god, the god who listens to his poor servants and delivers them from darkness. He is the Lord of Light, and his flames— "

The shadowbinder shut the book with a sigh. "Look to the fire, if that is where he speaks, and see what he shows you."

Melony looked into the torch she held. She was dumbfounded by what she saw there, clear as day. “Is this my babe?” She turned back to the red mask. “Will I—have a child?”

“You will be mother to three. Or one with three faces.”

Her heart quickened to think of such a future, ignoring the last cryptic words. “Sired by R’hllor’s champion?” 

“I cannot say who their father may be, only their names.”

 _Mayhaps that will give me a clearer understanding._ “Tell me their names, then.”

The red mask lifted back just slightly, as if in thought. “Flame, Shadow. Ash.”

Annoyance flashed through her. “I don’t understand.”

“When the fire burns through, when the smoke has cleared, what is left to cradle but the ash?” Again the red mask tilted forward. “Every gift comes at a price. Remember that.” Yromache's words came back to her. _Do you wish to die such a death?_

At last they stood before the doors of Stygai, the corpse city at the Shadow's heart, where even shadowbinders feared to tread _._ "You have seen what your god deigns to show you. I cannot bring you further, Melony of Volantis. You must pass beneath the Shadow alone."

"Alone? They say no one returns…" 

"They speak true." 

Melony closed her eyes. She understood now. When she turned to ask a final question, the woman had vanished. Melony blinked, feeling terror rise in her chest.  _I will not fear. I walk where true death cannot reach._ She lifted a trembling hand to the massive obsidian ring that opened the doors of Stygai. They did not move. She pushed harder, throwing her entire robed body against the oily black stone. Finally it gave way, groaning against the rocky earth and stirring up clouds of white ash. Her throat and eyes grew dry. 

_I will not fear._

Melony walked forward, around crumbling volcanic stone and fragments of dragonglass, and shadows rose from the ruined walls of the city and danced about her. She did not stop, dared not look them in their flickering eyes. _I will not fear. I will not fear. I walk where true death cannot reach._

She reached the easternmost curve of the ruined place, her robes brushing past a ruined obsidian wall. Beyond it stood a desolate cavern, covered in a dense layer of choking mist. From its depths came a sudden flock of shrieking scaled bats. Melony's heart leapt and pounded as if it were trying to escape. 

It was then she saw something in the distance, or rather a figure, not so fleeting as the shadows coiling around her blackened sandals. Melony swallowed hard. She was not prepared, but she might flee before— 

 _I will not fear. I walk where true death cannot reach._ She was no longer a slave girl. She was no mere whore, no fumbling child.  _I will not fear. I walk where true death cannot reach._

As Melony stepped inside toward her death, she stared it straight in the steely glint of its eye. Its wrath filled her belly and trickled down her thighs, slipping forth in the shape of winged serpents and a thousand land eels, as if all the twisted creatures of the Shadowlands had slithered inside her and now came spilling out—

_I will not fear. I…_

The torch fell from her hand, its flame dying as it thudded to the earth. No matter, for it shed little light upon the utter blackness of the cave. She would not fear the terrors of the night. R'hllor protected her from true death. "I have come to die and be born by the magic of this place," she said.

A dagger of fire plunged into her body before she could reconsider it, and then she was doubling over. Fragile knees buckled and broke beneath the weight of death. She felt ecstatic, her emotions raw, her bones breaking one by one within the black waste of the Shadow. An agonising groan was torn from her lips, and she collapsed onto the black stone. It shattered like dust beneath her, coating her ankles and hands with soot that came alive and clawed at her very flesh. 

“R'hllor," she panicked, "Please, R'hllor _…”_

_It is this you desired._

“Not this— "  _Flame_ , Melony remembered. _Burning, twisting, agonizing flame._ A knife hot in her womb, stabbing deeper and deeper. “I thought—it was meant for shadowbinding— "

_Shadows can only be birthed from light._

A hundred demons dragged themselves forth toward her, moving in a disjointed crawling motion, their terrible rotten bones scraping against the stone. “No, no, make it end,” she pled. 

_Look._

All around her the horrors of Stygai swayed and screamed, dozens of shrieking wails and undulating howls. A white-hot shudder ran down her spine.“No more,” she wept. The voice that echoed across the caverns was weak and delirious. 

_Look again, and you will understand._

With the last of her courage she lifted her eyes and saw clear across the heart, to great wings of ember spreading over the sky. _R'hllor!_  She looked into its eyes and saw a wall shining like blue crystal…she looked past the wall…and north and north she looked, to the curtain of light at the end of the world, and then beyond that curtain. She looked deep into the heart of the cold, and then she cried out, afraid. Her tears were flames, bloody flames down her cheeks, pulsing in time to the divine flame being ignited in her belly. 

 _Now you see,_  the fire whispered.  _Now you see why you must die here._

"Yes," she whispered. "I see." And just like that the pain ceased, and the demons withdrew back to their obsidian caves. A numbing silence overtook the screaming in her mind and body and throat. The girl who had been Melony rested on the damp earth, thanking her red god through blinding tears, praising his mercy. “Is it truly ended?” she wondered. _So soon?_

_Or had it been hours?_

She found the woman in the red mask outside Stygai, standing on the bank of the luminescent river. "Remember what I say. This new life cannot be taken—not even by yourself. A fire like this burns all in its path, scorching and scarring and demanding. The fire you carry will soon burn to term, and then you’ll birth much and more—but shadowbinding takes time to master. Remember your children.” 

Melony felt strangely hollow. “My children,” she said. “Flame…flame, and then shadow.” 

“And ash.”

 _And ash._ She winced. “Will it hurt?”

“Melony,” the woman sighed. “Have you ever known a life that did not?” 

* * *

She removed her veil, and for the first time in all the years she'd known the priestess, she glimpsed fear on her face. "Isaandre?" Yromache frowned, taking a step back at the sight of fire behind her eyes. "Oh, you fool…what have you done?"

The red mask had spoken true. It hurt, this devotion, this power,  _oh, it hurt,_ but far less than a collar around her neck. For a body was a temporary thing, a necessity for carrying out the Lord’s will into the world. She would go to the Seven Lands from here, to the place of storms and sea. And she—she who was nothing and no one—would fulfil the most ancient of prophecies. So the flames licked her flesh and the skin cracked, and her thighs bled, and little bloody rivers scarred anew.

_"You died by the waters of the Ash. Now you are born from the shadow, and live by the fire within you."_

_"Yes." And now… "I require a new face."_

_The red mask did not balk. "There is a way," she nodded. "Some would say death is cleaner…"_

"I have done just as you have, mistress. The fire lives within me."

The priestess shook her red head. "No. This— " she ran her hands down her beautiful face and hair— "this is a mere glamour, child! Don't you see? What have you done? Oh, God, did you not think of the _cost_ — "

"I know the cost. She told me."

Yromache looked grieved. "Who— " She took another step back at the sight of a dagger. "Isaandre!"

"My name is not Isaandre. Do you see my tattoo? I took another girl's place."

Horror spread over Yromache's face. "And now you will do the same with me?" she whispered. "Who are you?"

"Who are _you_ , mistress? Whose seeming did you take?"

"It is no one's— I created it— " 

"A face and body that will not decay?"

"Yes— "

"You will give it to me."

Fingers darted into the hidden pockets of Yromache's scarlet robes. "I will not give up all that I have worked for," she spat. "Not to some scheming temple whore— "

"Then I must do this, mistress, before the others return. I am sorry."

The priestess stumbled back as the dagger shone in the candlelight, terror overwhelming her expression again. "You are not sorry. There is only death in your eyes, a darkness behind that fire." 

"What you see is merely the new life given me by R'hllor."

Yromache attempted to throw sorcery at the girl, a powder that would boil her insides like stew, but it did nothing. 

"Mistress, please remove the glamour."

The priestess began to panic truly, then. "You are lost to R'hllor!" she hissed. 

"I will do it myself." She did, and positioned the dagger on her own throat, deep in focus. It had to be done carefully, precisely. The blade cut into her soft flesh, one clean swipe with only the slightest sting. Next she lifted the bloodied dagger to the other woman's throat. "Do not struggle so, mistress," she murmured. "Things only seem dark when there is darkness in your heart."

After, she left her small ruby in a pocket of Yromache's robes, and knelt down by her body on the floor, whispering the incantation. Her own face began to drape over the priestess's. 

Satisfied, she fastened the priestess's ruby over the wound in her own neck. With a final murmured spell in Asshai'i, it was done. Her body grew taller and softer in the moonlight, her eyes and hair shimmering like rich copper. Her tattoo and scars faded from sight, smoothing into pale skin. 

A fierce exhaustion settled over her, then. She merely stretched and made her way to the main halls of her temple. Everyone bowed to her with reverence, and she offered them tears in return. "There is a slave from the Volantis temple in my chambers," she confided. "It would seem she has extinguished her own life fire."

* * *

**VIII**

Decades and centuries later, she learned why the Westerosi people were called barbaric. Stannis Baratheon was unlike any man she'd known before. He was large and hard, and ungraceful, with a multitude of false gods about him. His people even sewed little animals onto their garments, and proudly. This man—this man she'd been seeking her whole life—did not look how she imagined the saviour of the world to look. But he was the Lord of Dragonstone… 

_Lack of faith is the blackest of sins, covering your heart until it crumbles to ash in your chest._

His wife was simpler to engage. It was she who had desired to learn about the one true god, she who had paid for Melisandre's passage and sustenance. That was not to say it was an altogether smooth transition. The frail old man who managed the castle seemed to despise the air she breathed. Whenever Lady Selyse called upon her for counsel, in the absence of her lord husband, Cressen would fret and question each word that left her lips.

There was a morning when the lady passed her a piece of parchment to consider. The old man was not slow to intercede. "My lady," he frowned at Selyse, "Are you certain she will understand such letters? They are…complex and… " 

Melisandre fixed him with a red stare before the lady could respond. "The letters are simple to me, Lord Maester."

Selyse made a derisive noise. "Cressen is no lord, Melisandre. A maester is stripped of his family name and titles when he earns his chain." 

"I see," she replied, smiling coolly. _It would seem you are no more noble than I, old man._ "I thank you kindly, Maester. Surely you have been trained in High Valyrian? This Common Tongue is a child's thing compared to its likes." 

"Quite right," said Lady Selyse curtly. "You might take a lesson from our guest, Cressen. She was a high priestess of the great red temple." 

Cressen's thin hands shook with age, and perhaps the smallest dash of fury.

She won small battles each day, but unsettling things lurked about the island. It was not easy to avoid the twitching fool with his motley tattoos—his Volantene  _slave_ tattoos—so she closed her eyes and tried to block her ears to his demented songs. And it distressed her to walk past their heretical temple. They called it a sept, an obscene place carved from the masts of ships that had carried the first blood-thirsty Valyrians to the west. The statues had been repainted since, covered with gaudy pearls and gilded thrice over. When she asked the Lady Selyse and her husband to burn them, their septon spat at her feet and called her an eastern harlot. A silent sister glared at her behind a white and grey shroud. _I ought kindle the fire with your cunt,_ Melisandre thought, _so dry is it_. She decided it best not to give voice to that. Wiser to murmur into Lord Stannis's ear at this feast or that, to suggest that the beauty of the statues would make them pleasing to R'hllor. He did not tolerate flatteries, this lord. But his resolve seemed to soften at a sweet word from her.

_R'hllor will grant you all you deserve, my lord. What have these seven gods ever done for you?_

It did not hurt that he'd witnessed her survive poison at his master's hand, and could see what she was capable of. The more effortless the sorcery, the more men feared the sorceress. That was a lesson she had learned long before Asshai.

Their first coupling, however, was a strained ordeal in a tent, far from effortless. The lord was now king, but it made him no more regal. It seemed he had one approach to all things in life: plow forward dutifully, without so much as a word of courtesy.  _R'hllor, do they not teach the arts of love in the Sunset Lands? H_ _e pushes inside me like a battering ram at the gate._ He thrust again, awkwardly, and she had to conceal a wince. It was not that he repulsed her, or lacked the tools needed, only that he did not know how to wield them. All at once she felt the weight of him atop her, and the pain, and began to feel suffocated. It had been a very long time since she lay beneath a man and it—but surely she could endure this— 

"I don't want to." Her eyes snapped open, realising that the whimper had come from her own lips. 

The king had frozen as well. His expression was more horrified than enraged. "Then I'll not…" 

"Wait," she said smoothly. It took all her focus to force a smile, quelling the tight feeling in her chest. "I meant only that…it will work better if I am above you." _It will work better if I am not gasping with panic._

He looked disgusted. "That is base," he said flatly. Still, she managed to coax him beneath her. All her confidence returned when she was sitting astride him. She took him inside her with a roll of her hips and watched as a sort of fascination spread over him. 

"Male and female the Lord made us, two parts of a greater whole. Do you see the power in such a union? Can you feel it…my king?" To her relief he finished quickly after that.

Still, he tried to push her off him almost immediately. "Your Grace," she ventured, clutching at his narrow waist. "The seed must take." He ground his teeth but allowed her to keep him between her thighs.

Scarcely half a minute passed before he lost patience. "How long must I remain here?" he demanded in his strange rough voice.

 _Little wonder his wife has only given him one child,_ she thought. "Do I displease so greatly, Sire?" 

Evidently that was the wrong response. He wrenched her off him as if she were a mere feather, staggering to the basin to scrub himself clean. "Dress, and return to your tent," he ordered. 

Melisandre lifted herself off his pallet, bewildered, and did as he bade her. Much later, she realised it was not revulsion that plagued him, but shame. By then she had already swelled and laboured, and borne him two shadows. 

* * *

She grew accustomed to Stannis Baratheon and the barbaric men of the Seven Kingdoms, and he seemed to liken to her in return. That did not make his cause any easier to champion. His black moods plunged the whole island into a deeper gloom. For days and nights their voices echoed through the castle, bitter words thrown almost unceasingly.

_"I know nothing of your loyalty — "_

_"What more can I do? It was me who sought you. It was me who_ _came across the world— "_

_"And sent me to my defeat!"_

_"Was that I? How can a person serve when they are sent away in shame?"_

_"I did not ask you to serve me— "_

_"Shall I leave, then?"_

_After a pregnant pause, he scowled. "And go where?"_

Her threat had been made. He shut himself up in his dark tower and shut her away with him. _He admits that he needs me now,_ she thought, but it was a hollow victory. Day after day she stood at his side, watching him grow gaunter and more hopeless. The servants whispered how his royal wife grew restless holding court on her own. And they whispered how the queen was distressed by the absence of her priestess, the one who had been so loyal and had brought such spiritual guidance. 

One evening she was reclined next to the king in his anteroom, her red gaze bloodshot as she obediently translated each flame for him. After several hours she sighed and begged him to eat, to rest. He simply stared at the fire with that brooding look. “You need to cut this whisker,” Melisandre added, patting his cheek.

He grimaced. “Just the one?”

“You must cut it. You look like a wild man.”

Stannis batted her hand away. “For gods’ sake, woman, leave me be!”

 _He bids me stay here yet complains of my_ _presence_.She tilted her head, patient. "Sire, you must not despair. R'hllor is behind you."

"If your god is behind me, why do my ships lie ruined in the Blackwater?"

Melisandre put a warm hand on his arm. "Turn your thoughts to greater things, Your Grace. Much can be accomplished if you will consider the boy, Edric Storm…" Sharp blue eyes narrowed at her. She fell silent, knowing it best to continue the effort another day. 

After some minutes watching the dance of the brazier, Stannis spoke again. _"'Whiskers.'"_

"Sire?"

He looked at her, the hint of a smile at his grim mouth. "The correct word is _whiskers_. There is more than one whisker on my face." 

"Yes." She nodded. "Of course."

Stannis laughed openly, then. The sound was shocking, for she had not heard him laugh in months. "Ah, Melisandre. Did your red temple neglect to teach you letters?"

"The temple…" She hesitated for the slightest moment, blinking in uncertainty. The king's amusement vanished as soon as it had come. 

"Never mind," he frowned. His gaze fell back on the fire. "Never mind it." 

* * *

She tried to hide her third child from him, but he noticed anyway.

"Your moon blood is not right," he said, somberly. A big hand smoothed down her copper hair, settling on her hip. Melisandre let her eyes flutter closed as she lie next to him. In the North he had grown freer with his affections, even in view of others. _He does not love me, will never love me._ But these days he would not hesitate to visit her bedchamber and to share her bed.

"Sire, it is quite good," she assured him. 

"No," he shook his head. "I see you bleed too often…dark blood, black blood. It is not right." 

 _It is the ash,_ she thought. _My fire is burning through, weakened by the shadows, just as it was with Stannis._  "Do not concern yourself," she murmured, and burrowed into his broad chest. His heart thudded against its cage, against bones that were sharp against her cheek. 

"I fear you have concealed things from me," he insisted.

Dread filled Melisandre's throat, choking her. She pulled back, careful to keep her panic hidden. "Sire, what might I conceal? You are my sovereign."

Weary blue eyes fell shut. "Perhaps you feared my reaction…"

"To what?" 

His eyes snapped open again, scrutinising her. "To a child."

For once Melisandre was uncertain how to respond. "No," she managed.

"There was no child?"

"No." 

"My lady wife has had such bleeding. It can happen with a babe."

"There was never any child," she snapped, far sharper than she intended. He lifted an eyebrow, and she was abashed. "Sire. Do you think R'hllor would allow his servants to be plagued by such distractions? I have given my word that you need not worry about these matters."

The king looked almost disappointed. "As you say," he said, then turned away from her to sleep.

For a long while, she could not focus on the fire. _Why had he asked such things?_ Tears welled up in her eyes, silently leaking down her face. Exhaustion from watching the flames, she told herself. But there was no true explanation for them. Only the shadowbinder's words echoed in her ears, reminding her of the price of all her power.  _If only he knew of the shadows she had bound, how much she had sacrificed…_ Ink was hot upon her cheekbone, invisible yet ripe with familiar warmth. 

"Strengthen me R'hllor," she prayed. "Strengthen your slave, your faithful instrument."

Her king stirred slightly. Melisandre turned to soothe him, stroking the fringes of his black hair with a pale hand. _And keep my Azor Ahai strong, Lord. If he perishes, it will all have been for naught._

Sometimes she wished _she_ could perish, before remembering that she was not allowed to wish for things.

* * *

**IX**

There had been a man once— _or was it a boy?_ No, it was a man. He had been a lord, then a king, then—

The candles whispered his name in the North, whispering and howling with the wind, over and over. Melisandre picked up the candles and dashed them against the wall.

 _I would like to die now,_ she told R'hllor. _Truly die._ R'hllor told her that she had to serve Azor Ahai.

Laughter bubbled up in her throat. She could not remember the last time she laughed. "How much faith must I have? For how long?" she wondered aloud. _How long? First it was a master, then a temple and a thousand groping men—no, that was Melony, I have always been a priestess—there was a king, and a bastard commander—_

She did not recognise the boy she had raised from the dead, and he did not recognise anyone or anything. The soul was lacking in his eyes when they had opened. She feared a part of him had been lost to the Great Other in the sleep of death, never to return. One day she told him as much. 

He rounded on her with those cold grey eyes, shoving her against the stones of the King's Tower. "Enough of your righteous madness."

"My lord, I speak only the truth," she said, taken aback.

"How did Stannis fare, heeding your  _truths_?"

A dull ache blossomed her chest. "Do not reject my counsel now," she whispered. "I know what it means to die, Jon. I know."

"How could you know?"

"I knew the words of your wildling girl, did I not? What difference— "

"Your tricks are worthless to me, as are you," he hissed, pushing her again. This time her head made hard contact with the wall. Silence swallowed up the sickening thud it had made, and the lord commander fell still, as if caught in a trance. After a moment something unreadable passed over his face. He loosened his grip on her upper arms. "Forgive me," he frowned, looking lost. "I have hurt you."

Melisandre followed his gaze to the vibrant bruises purpling her pale skin. "I do not feel it," she admitted.

That evening she wondered if she ever would. Melony had heard of bed slaves who found a way to escape their numb existence, had watched as their bodies were carried quietly out of the temple.

 _Yes, that's it_. Melisandre began to open her veins with a little knife. Her only remaining attendant heard, and came running into the room with wide brown eyes.

"Oh," she sighed. The blood did not flow red anymore, not since the fire had burnt it. _Lack of faith is the blackest of sins, covering your heart until it crumbles to ash in your chest._ She smiled at him, dejected. "Fear not, Devan. I just remembered I cannot die."

* * *

**X**

There were battles and wars. They dragged her around, saying they needed her power, her visions, her prophecies. Jon Snow, disturbed as he was, led his people against the Others, until a girl with dragons razed everything north of Winterfell.   

Now she would not fail. She had served all she could, and R'hllor would release her. _There is only one way,_ she realised. Azor Ahai had plunged his sword into Nissa Nissa's breast. She was no Nissa Nissa. But she would offer her heart all the same.

"Return to your father and mother in the south," Melisandre told Devan. "Take my horse and my gold things and ride as fast as you can."

"My lady," he pleaded, lips trembling. 

 _He loves me, God help him._ She kissed his cheek. "You have been too loyal, Devan. Do not make the same mistakes as I."

When he finally departed from her, weeping, she washed herself carefully and changed her robes. Her sleeves were full of hidden pockets, all empty and beyond repair. Once they had been filled with powders to turn fire green or blue or silver, powders to make a flame roar and hiss and leap up higher than a man is tall, powders to make smoke. A smoke for truth, a smoke for lust, a smoke for fear, and the thick black smoke that could kill a man outright. 

Her fingers hesitated upon the clasp of her ruby choker. She removed it before she could think twice, and unlocked the carved chest she had brought across the narrow sea. 

It was empty now as well. She marvelled that she had lasted as long as she did. She had been stronger at the Wall, stronger even than in Asshai. Her every word and gesture was more potent, and she could do things that she had never done before. With such sorceries at her command, she had no need of the feeble tricks of alchemists and pyromancers. The Wall had been her strength and her refuge. 

The Wall no longer stood. Melisandre shut the chest with her ruby inside, turned the lock, and threw the key onto the fire. 

Next, she unwrapped the sword she had hidden beneath her bed. The ruby still shone in its pommel, though weakly, just as the ruby at her throat and the fire in her womb. Melisandre sighed, remembering the man who had wielded it.

She thought of him when she fell upon the blade. She even thought of him as her heart continued to beat, frantically, like a trapped dove, thought of him as she faltered and cried out and lost her strength.  _You must finish it_ , a voice said. _To touch the light you must pass beneath the shadow._

"But I am weary," she tried to argue, coughing on salty blood.

 _And soon you will have deliverance._ She grit her teeth at that, pushing the blade deeper, carving around her heart until each artery was severed. Only then was she certain she would die—for even immortals needed a heart in their chest. Facing death she felt human, felt every agonising breath as it shuddered in and out of her torn chest. She felt her life fully, and felt fully alive. 

A voice called for  _Melony_.The woman who had been Melisandre followed her mother into a deep sleep. 


End file.
